Elon Musk says the Twitter deal can't work until a dispute over bot accounts is resolved

Elon Musk escalated public hostility with Twitter's chief executive Tuesday morning, saying his acquisition of the social media company "cannot proceed" until he sees more information about the proliferation of spam accounts.

Without citing sources, Musk tweeted that Twitter was "20% fake/spam accounts" and implied that Twitter's documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission were misleading. The company says less than 5% of its daily active users are spam accounts.

"My offer is based on the accuracy of Twitter documents at the SEC," Musk tweeted. "Yesterday, the Twitter CEO publicly refused to show <5% evidence. So this deal can't go ahead until he does."

Musk's latest tweet cast more doubt on the $44 billion deal. Musk said Friday that it was "temporarily held," but he "still supports the acquisition." Musk's turn fueled speculation that the world's wealthiest people could use the bot debate to get a better price for Twitter, either as a negotiating tactic or when needed.

Twitter shares fell 1.7% during premarket trading on Tuesday. The stock has erased all gains in the weeks since Musk announced his stake in the company and is now trading at $36.80 per share -- well below Musk's asking price of $54.20 per share. On Monday, he shared a series of tweets with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal about the spam account issue.

Twitter (TWTR) terminates "more than half a million spam accounts every day," Agrawal wrote. He repeated the 5 percent statistic, saying the estimate was based on "several human surveys ... from thousands of accounts" conducted randomly. Twitter has previously acknowledged that while it believes the estimates are "reasonable," the measurements have not been independently verified. The actual number of fake also spam accounts may be higher.

Agrawal's original 13 tweets were answered by Musk with a response reflecting the online unusual and extreme nature of the deal: emoji.

Musk asked a more thoughtful question. "So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money?" Musk asked, "This is very important to Twitter's financial health," he added.